SPRING 2010
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the American Research Center In Egypt present
Up The Nile In Style: Travel In Egypt During The Early 20th Century
David Moyer, Marymount Manhattan College
Thursday, July 8, 2010, 6:00 P.M.
NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street, between 5th and Madison Aves.
This event is free and open to the public. Please R.S.V.P. to isaw@nyu.edu.
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NYU'S Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the American Research Center in Egypt present
The Dead at Home: Domestic Features in Early Egyptian Cemeteries
Ann Macy Roth, New York University
Tuesday, June 1, 2010, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu.
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NYU'S Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The First Annual M. I. Rostovtzeff Lectures
Authorship, Tradition, and Performance in Early China: The Staged Author and the Rise of Literature
Martin Kern, Princeton University
Monday May 24, 2010 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
The figure of the author—with the text read as personal expression and the author understood or imagined through his text—appeared with the empire. Just when the totalizing imagination of political unity had turned into reality, the author entered the scene as a figure of individuality and rupture: a tragic hero standing defiantly against his time who found himself exiled, punished, and driven into a suicide all the while lamenting his fate in elaborate literary composition. This figure—with Qu Yuan as archetype—became created, staged, and performed in his text, fusing biography (in Sima Qian’s case even autobiography) with his own authorial voice. The result was an author-hero consumed by fate and emotion that were both the cause and the consequence of his textual creation.
Reception to follow. Please RSVP to isaw@nyu.edu indicating date(s) attending.
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The status of Late Bronze Age ships within eastern Mediterranean societies
Caroline Sauvage, ISAW Visiting Research Scholar
Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 6:00PM
Lecture Hall
ISAW Building
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, please click here.
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NYU'S Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The First Annual M. I. Rostovtzeff Lectures
Authorship, Tradition, and Performance in Early China: Writing and Peformance
Martin Kern, Princeton University
Monday May 17, 2010 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Texts in early China were not disembodied ideas. As material artifacts of bronze, bamboo, stone, silk, and wood, they served in a wide range of contexts that all, in different ways, were fundamentally performative—from the early bronze inscriptions used in the ancestral sacrifices to the presentation and recitation of bamboo writings at the early imperial court, from royal proclamations and ancestral hymns to exercises of political persuasion and self-cultivation, from manuscripts buried in tombs to stele inscriptions erected on mountains. More often than not, the rhetoric of performance was one of explicit and highly codified remembrance: remembering and reconstituting not just the past but the memory of the past.
Please RSVP to isaw@nyu.edu indicating date(s) attending.
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NYU'S Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the American Research Center in Egypt present
The Temple of Ramesses II: Examining Religious and Political History through New Epigraphical Methods
Ogden Goelet, New York University
Sameh Iskander, Project Director, Ramesses II Temple Excavation
Thursday, May 13, 2010, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu.
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NYU'S Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The First Annual M. I. Rostovtzeff Lectures
Authorship, Tradition, and Performance in Early China: Texts as Rewritten Traditions
Martin Kern, Princeton University
Monday May 10, 2010 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
In the emerging early Chinese written tradition, texts, or parts of texts, were constantly quoted and transformed. Uninhibited by notions of authorship or original composition, existing texts reappeared in ever-changing contexts and formations. Textual chains of re-compositions and continuations only gradually settled into intellectual traditions while still being punctuated by explicit quotations and references to anonymous earlier texts. This culture of a borrowed past produced as its principal icon the figure of Confucius. Credited with the dictum “I transmit but do not create,” Confucius was nevertheless cherished as a new source of traditional authority—ready to be invoked as he had invoked the kings of old.
Please RSVP to isaw@nyu.edu indicating date(s) attending.
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Series
Muriel Debie, Visiting Research Scholar
Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 6:00pm
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU'S Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The First Annual M. I. Rostovtzeff Lectures
Authorship, Tradition, and Performance in Early China: Texts Without Authors
Martin Kern, Princeton University
Monday May 3, 2010 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
For the first eight hundred years of the early Chinese textual tradition, the notion of the author is nearly completely absent. Instead, texts are presented in a totalizing vision: poetry representing the different states within the early Chinese realm, royal speeches from different periods, sweeping divinatory, cosmological, and historical accounts, and a wide range of philosophical and technical writings encompassing the entire social order. In all these, the notion of the author was not merely absent; instead, texts were composed in a way that rendered any authorial presence entirely invisible. No author could be held responsible for them, nor could a text be defined through its connection to an actual persona.
Reception will follow. Please RSVP to isaw@nyu.edu indicating date(s) attending.
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
American Research Center in Egypt Lecture
Lanny Bell, Brown University
Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 6:00pm
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU'S Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
New Evidence from Dunhuang, China and Central Asia for the Kangju: An Enigmatic Power on the Silk Road
Bi Bo, Renmin University, Beijing
Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Kangju was a powerful nomadic state or confederacy in Central Asia two thousand years ago. It was the first state in that region to send an embassy to Han China (206 BCE-220 CE), and maintained contact with China for about five hundred years. For this reason, the most important sources of information about Kangju are the Chinese historical texts. Unfortunately, their accounts tend to be short and lack details, so our understanding of Kangju and its relations with ancient China has been rather limited.
This lecture will focus on some important new inscriptions recently discovered. They will not only help us check how reliable the Chinese historical sources are, but also tell us much more about the Kangju and their contacts with China.
The first group consists of a dozen wooden slips with Chinese writing found at the Xuanquan site in Dunhuang, China and dated to the late Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE-24 CE). The second group is a set of Sogdian inscriptions from Kultobe in Kazakhstan, deciphered by Prof. N. Sims-Williams. Combining the Chinese historical records with the newly discovered inscriptions, we can contextualize the Kultobe inscriptions, assign a likely date to them, and elucidate the history of Kangju from the first to the fourth century CE (i.e., from the Chinese Han to the Jin Dynasty).
This event is free and open to the public. For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu.
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NYU'S Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Earliest Semitic Literature: The Road to Ebla
Gonzalo Rubio, Pennsylvania State University
Monday, April 26, 2010, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
The discovery of thousands of well-preserved cuneiform tablets dating to the mid-third millennium B.C.E. at Ebla (Tell Mardikh) in northwestern Syria, has revolutionized our knowledge of the history of the Semitic languages and the ancient Near East. The Ebla corpus includes administrative and chancellery documents, as well as lexical lists, incantations, a royal ritual, and a number of literary compositions. Most of these compositions are written in the local Semitic language, Eblaite. Both the language of Ebla and its early Semitic literature belong to a cultural continuum that stretched from southern Mesopotamia all the way to northern Syria. Across this extended scribal landscape, early Semitic and Sumerian traditions underwent various processes of textualization and cross-pollination. Such interactions materialized in a literature whose archaic nature makes it as captivating as it is intellectually challenging.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu.
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NYU's Department of Anthropology presents
Uncommitted generations of the Neolithic transition: The Middle Danube Basin frontier zone in the Mid-Sixth Millennium cal BC
Eszter Bánffy, Archaeological Institute HAS, Budapest
Thursday, April 22, 2010, 2:00PM
Kriser Room
Anthropology Department
25 Waverly Place
New York, NY 10003
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NYU's Department of Classics presents
On Not Writing History
A.J Woodman, University of Virginia
Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 6:00PM
Classics Conference Room
Silver Center, 5th floor
100 Washington Square East
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Quartier du Stade on late Hellenistic Delos: a case study of rapid urbanization
Mantha Zarmakoupi, Visiting Research Scholar
Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 6:00pm
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Excavations at Amheida: The 2010 Season
Roger Bagnall, Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Pamela Crabtree, Ellen Morris, Adam Prins, Lisa Saladino, and Jennifer Thum, New York University
Monday, April 19, 2010, 6:00PM
Lecture Hall
ISAW Building
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Amheida (ancient Trimithis) is a large urban settlement in Egypt's Dakhla Oasis, with remains from the Old Kingdom to late Roman times, where a team sponsored by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, and by Columbia University conducts excavations each winter. (See www.amheida.org for past seasons and general information). The excavation is part of a semester program for undergraduate students.
Seven members of the Amheida field team will present the results of fieldwork carried out this January and February. From decorated temple blocks to a sigma-shaped dining feature, from privatized streets to pillared halls, from dietary habits to an enigmatic mention of copper sulphate, there’s something for every taste. Students considering applying to the program are particularly encouraged to come, but the lecture is open to all.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, please click here.
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The New York University A.S. Onassis Program in Hellenic Studies presents
The Point of Reading: Some remarks on Plato’s Phaedrus and Theaetetus
Peter Szendy, Paris X, Nanterre
Socrates’ Dream
Laura Odello, translator and author
Respondent
Iakovos Vasiliou, City University of New York
Monday, April 19, 2010, 5:30PM
Kimmel Center
60 Washington Square South, Suite 907
New York, NY 10012
Reception to follow
For more information please contact Christos Birkitt at Christos@nyu.edu, 212.998.3979
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The City University of New York presents
New York’s Women in Archaeology: Perspectives From the Field
Saturday, April 10, 2010, 9:45 A.M.
Hunter College
Faculty Lounge, Hunter West, 8th Floor
9:45 A.M. Morning Reception
10:00 A.M. Welcome
Host Dené Rivera
10:10 A.M. Keynote Speaker
Two Views on NYC Archaeology
Nan Rothschild, Columbia University, Barnard College
10:40 A.M. New Amsterdam: The Subordination of a Native Space
Anne-Marie Cantwell, Rutgers University
11:00 A.M. Africans in Dutch New Amsterdam and 17th Century New York
Diana diZerega Wall, CUNY Graduate Center
11:20 A.M. The Rise of Urbanism in Anglo-Saxon England: Evidence from Zooarchaeology
Pamela Crabtree, New York University
11:40 A.M. Q&A
12:00 P.M. Lunch Break
1:30 P.M. Keynote Speaker
Is It Trash or Is It Treasure?
Joan H.Geismar, Archaeological Consultant
1:50 P.M. A View From Across the Pond: Sacred and Secular Space at the Monastery of Psalmodi in Southern France
Susan Dublin, Hunter College
2:10 P.M. From Manhattan to Harappa: Urbanism in the Indus civilization
Rita Wright, New York University
2:30 P.M. ’Redcoats Halt Subway in New York’: The South Ferry Terminal Project in Battery Park
Diane Dallal, Director of Archaeology, AKRF Inc.
2:50 P.M. Pot Bakers Hill, the African Burial Ground, and 9/11: Stonewares from 18th Century Manhattan
Meta Janowitz, URS Corp
3:10 P.M. Q&A
3:30 P.M. Student Session featuring Brook Hanna and Kimberly Consroe
For more information, please contact Dené Rivera.
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Georgy Valdchev & Lora Tchekoratova
This wonderful performance featuring Bulgarian musicians, violinist Georgy Valtchev and pianist Lora Tchekoratova will showcase works by Eastern European composers inspired by the musical traditions of Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova.
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 7:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Thinking about mathematics through lists in ancient Mesopotamia: an Old Babylonian sample
Christine Proust, Visiting Research Scholar
Tuesday, April 6, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Deconstructing the Myth of the Great Mother Goddess: Masking and Breaking the Human Body in Old Europe
Peter Biehl, SUNY Buffalo
Friday, April 2, 2010, 5:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Exhibition Movie Screening of East of Bucharest (A fost sau n-a fost?) (2006)
Directed by Corneliu Porumboiu
Thursday, April 1, 7:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU's Department of Classics presents
Etruscan Inscriptions on Ivory Plaques from Poggio Civitate (Murlo)
Rex Wallace, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Wednesday, March 31, 2010, 6:00PM
Classics Conference Room
Silver Center, 5th floor
100 Washington Square East
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the Archaeological Institute of America present
The Delphic Oracle: Modern Science Examines an Ancient Mystery
John Hale, University of Louisville
Thursday, March 25, 6:30PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Ancient Greek and Roman authors stated that Apollo’s sacred oracle at Delphi was located at the site of a chasm or fissure in the rock; an emission of sweet-smelling vapor or gas; and a sacred spring. The priestess who pronounced the oracles sat on a tall tripod above the fissure where she could inhale the vapor, thus triggering a trance in which she could serve as a medium for the prophetic oracles. Most scholars have been skeptical of these reports, denying that there had ever been a fissure or a gaseous emission in the crypt of the temple. However, in 1995 an interdisciplinary team studied the evidence from geology, chemistry, and toxicology that related to the oracle. The results vindicated the ancient sources. Dr. Hale and his colleagues have gone on to study Greek oracle sites elsewhere in the Aegean and Asia Minor, where they have found similar geological features.
Reception to follow
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Stevens Institute of Technology presents
Greece: Ancient Legacy & Modern Technology
Perspectives on Ancient Technology
Markus Asper, New York University
Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 4:30PM
Stevens Institute of Technology
Babbio 122
Hoboken, NJ
For more information, email slevin@stevens.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Riding from Hwang-Ho to the Danube: New Light on the Origin of the Alans
Oleksandr Symonenko, Visiting Research Scholar
Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the American Turkish Society present
Probing and Preserving the Past in Western Turkey: The Central Lydia Archaeological Survey
Christopher Roosevelt, Boston University
Monday, March 15, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Rediscovering the Inscriptions of Campa (Vietnam)
Arlo Griffiths, French School of Asian Studies
Monday, March 8, 2010, 6:00PM
ISAW Building
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
The aim of this lecture is to inform the interested New York public on recent developments in the study of the written records of ancient 'Indianized' polities in Southeast Asia. We will take as example the epigraphic corpus of the ancient Campa kingdom(s), which lay in what is now central and southern Vietnam. The study of Campa epigraphy involves texts in Sanskrit and in the poorly known vernacular Old Cam language, which belongs to the Austronesian language family. This field of research once flourished in French colonial times, then all but died out after WW II, and has only recently been resuscitated from a coma that lasted for decades. Newly discovered inscriptions have started to be published again, and a census of Campa inscriptions was undertaken last September-October in museums and archaeological sites of Vietnam. The aim of the census was to up-date the general inventory of Campa inscriptions, whose last published installment dates to 1942, and to record essential data of previously known and newly discovered epigraphical documents. The presentation will discuss general aspects of Southeast Asian epigraphy, as well as specific aspects of the Campa corpus and the history of its study. Some new inscriptions, which throw interesting new light on the history of Campa and its place within the larger scale development of Southeast Asian history, will be selected for close inspection.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information please email isaw@nyu.edu.
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Exhibition Movie Screening of Reenactment (Reconstituirea) (1968)
Directed by Lucian Pintilie
Thursday, March 4, 2010, 7:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Huns of Asia: New Archaeological Discoveries in Russia
Sergey Minyaev, Russian Academy of Sciences
Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Early Christianity in the Western Desert of Egypt: New Evidence from the 2006-2008 Excavations at Ain el-Gedida, Dakhla Oasis
Nicola Araveccia, Visiting Research Scholar
Tuesday, March 2, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU's Department of Anthropology and Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies present
Life, Love, and Death on the Estate of a Princess in 21st Century BCE Mesopotamia
David Owen, Cornell University
Monday, March 1, 2010, 3:30PM
25 Waverly Place
Room 706
For more information please email rita.wright@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Exhibition Movie Screening of Wasps' Nest (Cuibul de Viespi) (1986)
Directed by Horea Popescu
Thursday, February 18, 2010, 7:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the Archaeological Institute of America, New York Society present
Living forever in ancient Egypt
Edward Bleiberg, Egyptian Department, Brooklyn Museum
Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 6:30 PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street
Ancient Egyptian religion required people to prepare for their deaths by living a life of justice and providing themselves with specific objects to furnish a tomb. Fulfilling these spiritual and material requirements would allow them to live forever in the afterlife. To lead a life of justice, the god Osiris had established clear rules which every educated Egyptian tried to learn. But the materials needed to furnish a tomb could be an impediment for people who were neither royal nor noble. Egyptians used a variety of methods to economize on these necessities. This talk examines both the spiritual and material struggles Egyptians underwent in order to live forever.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Reception to follow.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Temple Treasury Records and Local Politics in Ur III Mesopotamia
Xiaoli Ouyang, Visiting Research Scholar
Tuesday, February 16, 2010, 6:00 PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street
This lecture targets a group of Umma texts dated to the Ur III dynasty (c. 2112-2004 BCE), probably the best documented period in Mesopotamian history. Umma is the province with the largest number of texts, accounting for almost one third of the 90,000 or so records from this period. This group of texts documents the delivery of treasures, mostly objects made of precious metals and stones, to temple households as ex-voto gifts, and the subsequent registration and disbursement of these objects.
A prosopographical study identifies among the donors governors, mayors, agricultural administrators, doctors, merchants, and scribes. The recipients of the gifts include priests, top officials in Umma’s four districts, and shepherds.
Evidence demonstrates that the precious items were separated from the general votive offerings and kept in a treasury called “house of the god,” under the custody of a special guardian. Not only did he disburse the treasures for their sanctioned use, he also funneled a great number of valuables from the temple treasury to Umma governors for undisclosed purposes. This indicates that the governor may well have maintained a strong control over the temple households in Umma, a scenario that hearkens back to a much earlier historical period despite the unprecedented degree of centralization going on in the Ur III kingdom.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Deconstructing the Myth of the Great Mother Goddess: Masking and Breaking the Human Body in Old Europe
Peter Biehl, State University of New York at Buffalo
Thursday, February 11, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Crossroad, Periphery, and Frontier: The Central Asian Heartland from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age
Wu Xin, Visiting Scholar, ISAW
Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Exhibition Movie Screening of Morometii (The Journey) (1987)
Directed by Stere Gulea
Thursday, January 28, 2010, 7:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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The NYU Department of English and the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium present
Latinities in England, 894-1135
A workshop in two parts
David Townsend, University of Toronto
Friday, January 22, 2010
New York University
13-19 University Place
10:30AM Registration, Room 223
11:00AM Morning Session, Room 229
Asser and Æthelweard
2:00PM Afternoon Session, Room 229
Goscelin and William of Malmesbury
Please note: the event is open to pre-registered participants only; for pre-registration and recommended reading, please contact Gerald Song (geraldsong@mac.com)
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Folk and traditional songs of Romania
Christine Gezzo & Company
Friday, January 22, 2010, 7:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Oak Library
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Late Copper Age in the East Balkans and the Case of Varna
Vladimir Slavchev, Varna Regional Museum of History
Thursday, January 21, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Living in the Heights: Hilltop settlement and the changing landscape of northern Hispania during late antiquity
Damian Fernandez, Visiting Research Scholar, ISAW
Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
For more information please contact isaw@nyu.edu
FALL 2009
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NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) present
Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets
Dr. Yekaterina Barbash, Assistant Curator of Egyptian Art, Brooklyn Museum
Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 6:00PM
NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 East 84th Street (between 5th and Madison Avenues)
New York, NY
For more information, please contact ARCE.NY@nyc.rr.com.
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The NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Comparing Cultural Configurations: Astrology and Divination in Cicero's De divinatione and Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae
Darrel Rutkin, Visiting Research Scholar, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
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The NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
"So that all the cultivated lands of Bukhara would be inside those walls" - New research perspectives on Western Central Asian oasis walls and territorial fortifications
Soeren Stark, Freie Universitaet Berlin
Friday, December 11, 2009, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
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The NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Attic Pottery in Scythian Graves
Friederike Fless, Freie Universitaet Berlin
Thursday, December 10, 2009, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
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The NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Alexander the Great and Dionysios in India: The Greek Interaction with Early Indian Buddhist Art
Osmund Bopearachchi, French National Center for Scientific Research, Paris
Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
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The NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Decoration, Astrology, and Empire: A Textile of Han China Unearthed from the Taklamakan Desert
Lillian Lan-ying Tseng, Department of Art History, Yale University
Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
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The NYU Center for Ancient Studies and the Archaeological Institute of America present
Theme Parks, Treasure Hunters, and Tribal Icons: World Heritage in an Age of Globalization
Dr. Neil Silberman, Center for Cultural Heritage, University of Massachusetts
Monday, December 7, 2009, 6:00 PM
Jurow Lecture Hall
Silver Center, Room 101A
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)
This event is free and open to the public.
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The NYU Departments of Art History and Classics and the NYU/NYPL Re:Enlightenment Project present
'Venerable Monitors': Looking at the Acropolis of Athens in the age of Enlightenment
William St. Clair, University of London
Monday, December 7, 2009, 6:00PM
Silver Center for Arts and Science
Room 300
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The NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
The Eurasian Currents of Transmission and Adaptation: Four Case Studies
Anthony Barbieri-Low, University of California - Santa Barbara
Monday, December 7, 2009, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public.
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The NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
The Rise and Fall of Old Europe
David W. Anthony, Hartwick College
'Old Europe' refers to a cycle of Copper Age cultures in southeastern Europe that rose to a surprising level of complexity between about 5000-3500 BC and then collapsed. The astonishing art, solidly built towns and villages, and female-centered domestic cults that defined Old Europe disappeared. The decline of Old Europe is poorly understood and hotly debated.
This lecture reviews competing theories of the collapse and suggests that pastoral herding societies from the arid steppes of Ukraine might have played a significant role by destabilizing the agricultural economies of Old European towns.
Thursday, December 3, 2009, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.
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The NYU Department of Classics presents
NYU Yeronisos Island Excavations and Field School Information Session for Interested Students
Joan Breton Connelly, New York University
Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 5:30PM
Silver Center for Arts and Science
Room 300
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The NYU Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences presents
"From Athens to Bagdad to Timbuktu": transmitting philosophy in the Islamic world
Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University
Monday, November 30, 2009, 4:00 PM
4 Washington Square North, Conference Room, 2nd Floor
Please contact ebn216@nyu.edu for more information.
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Bringing the Frontier to the Center: Empires and Nomads from Achaemenid Persia to Tang China
Wu Xin, Visiting Research Scholar
Monday, November 30, 2009, 6:00PM
Lecture Hall
ISAW Building
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This paper presents a comparative consideration of the ideological strategies used by Achaemenid and the Tang empires to manage relations with their subjects living in Central Asia and on the Central to Eastern Eurasian steppe. For both empires, the nomadic communities to the north were an especially important constituency that was complicated by strong dynastic hereditary ties. In each case, a conscious program specifically addressing this complex and mobile community was developed and was expressed through the official language (text and images) of the imperial court. An exploration of those programs reveals striking parallels in their approach to maintaining imperial control and cooperation.
This event is free and open to the public.
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NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Birth of European Painting in the Sands of Egypt
Thomas Mathews, John Langeloth Loeb Professor Emeritus in the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
This lecture is a preliminary report on a project studying some 62 painted panels from Roman Egypt, which are practically the only surviving examples of this important artistic genre from the ancient world. Representing the Egyptian pantheon in its final manifestation, they are an important document of the history of religion. But the evidence also looks forward to the continuance of panel painting in the medieval world, introducing many of the formulae and compositions of Byzantine icon painting, formulae which endured even to the Renaissance.
Thursday, November 12, 2009, 6:00PM
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Lecture Hall
15 East 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This event is free and open to the public. For more information please email isaw@nyu.edu.
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New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000 – 3500 BC
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
The Lost World of Old Europe brings to the United States for the first time more than 250 objects recovered by archaeologists from the graves, towns, and villages of Old Europe, a cycle of related cultures that achieved a precocious peak of sophistication and creativity in what is now southeastern Europe between 5000 and 4000 BC, and then mysteriously collapsed by 3500 BC. Long before Egypt or Mesopotamia rose to an equivalent level of achievement, Old Europe was among the most sophisticated places that humans inhabited. Some of its towns grew to city-like sizes. Potters developed striking designs, and the ubiquitous goddess figurines found in houses and shrines have triggered intense debates about women’s roles in Old European society. Old European copper-smiths were, in their day, the most advanced metal artisans in the world. Their intense interest in acquiring copper, gold, Aegean shells, and other rare valuables created networks of negotiation that reached surprisingly far, permitting some of their chiefs to be buried with pounds of gold and copper in funerals without parallel in the Near East or Egypt at the time. The exhibition, arranged through loan agreements with 20 museums in three countries (Romania, Bulgaria and the Republic of Moldova), brings the exuberant art, enigmatic ‘goddess’ cults, and precocious metal ornaments and weapons of Old Europe to American audiences.
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New York University's Center for Ancient Studies, Department of Classics, Graduate School of Arts & Science, and Institute for the Study of the Ancient World present
The New York University Graduate Conference
Honey on the Cup: Didactic in the Ancient World
Saturday, November 7, 2009, 9:00 A.M.
Jurow Lecture Hall
Silver Center, Room 101A
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)
9:00 A.M. Coffee and Registration
9:45 A.M. Welcoming Remarks
10:00 A.M. POETICS OF DIDACTIC
The Poetics of Knowledge in Oppian’s Halieutica
Emily Kneebone, Cambridge University
Looking at ‘Atomistic’ Repetition in the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius
Timothy Haase, Brown University
Teaching Stoic(s) Thinking
Orazio Capello, University of Southern California
11:30 A.M. Break
11:45 A.M. RECEIVING DIDACTIC
Fretful Birds and Philosopher Cows: Cicero’s Prognostica and Aratus’s Diosemeia
Christopher Polt, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Didactic, Rhetoric and Genre: Reading Lucian’s ‘Conversations with Hesiod
Sarah Olsen, University of California, Berkeley
From Libya to Egypt: Lucan and the Limits of Didactic Poetry
Patrick Glauthier, Columbia University
1:15 P.M. Lunch
3:15 P.M. QUESTIONING GENRE
Simonides’ Protagoras Fragment and the Problem of Didactic ‘Genre’
Alexander Hall, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Thank You for Being a Friend: Ovid’s Euxine Instructions to Friends at Rome
Whitney Snead, University of Cincinnati
Experto c(r)edite: Vitruvius’ New Didactic
John Oksanish, Yale University
4:45 P.M. Break
5:00 P.M. Keynote Address: Ways of Knowing and Teaching in Early Greek Poetry
Prof. J.S. Clay, University of Virginia
Reception to Follow
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New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Annual Leon Levy Lecture
The Historian in the Future of the Ancient World: A View from Central Eurasia
Nicola Di Cosmo, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Much of the making of the ancient world has to do with the movement of peoples, and with the languages, genes, and material cultures they carried from place to place. Central Eurasia from the Pontus to the Baikal was a major theater of population movements from the dispersal of the Indo-Europeans to the migratory waves of the early Middle Ages. While often met with skepticism, the recent encounter between molecular biology and genetic studies with linguistics, archaeology, and physical anthropology has heralded radical changes in the study of the ancient world, if nothing else because all these disciplines have consequently been thrown into closer contact with each other. A dialogue has developed among geneticists, linguists, archaeologists and anthropologists over the past twenty-some years that, while sometimes dissonant and acrimonious, has produced ideas and data that may prove useful for historical research. How should the historian of the ancient world view this development? Does the historian have a role to play? This question will be discussed especially in relation to the study of ancient Eurasian nomads.
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New York University's Department of Classics presents
Conception and practice of Roman rule: the example of transport infrastructure
Anne Kolb, University of Zurich
Thursday, October 29, 2009, 6:00PM
Classics Department Conference Room, 5th floor
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair access)
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New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The ISAW Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Series
The Horse is Man's Wings: Archaeological Science and the Changing Nature of the Human-Horse Relationship in Central and East Asia in Prehistory
Mim Bower, Cambridge University
Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall, Second Floor
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
The relationship between horses and humans reaches far back into prehistory. At first, horses were a source of human food, but at some time in the past, perhaps during the process of domestication, horses took on a much greater role. Not only were they ridden, giving humans the possibility of traveling with great speed over large distances, or harnessed in chariots, which could be used to show status and power, they became venerated in a way that no other domestic animals have been. During the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, all across central and east Asia, in harness or with chariots, in groups, or alone, horses were buried along with their owners and carers, sometimes with the most amazing grave goods. Ultimately, an entirely new way of life developed from these practices: equestrian pastoral nomadism. But the importance of the horse in central and east Asia does not end in prehistory. The horse remains a powerful symbol in many cultures today and is associated with ideas of identity and nationhood.
In this presentation, Dr. Bower will report on the results of a large interdisciplinary archaeological science project which explores the evolving relationship between horses and humans, from prehistory to the present day using a wide range of cutting edge archaeological science methods, including archaeogenetics (living population genetics and ancient DNA), geometric morphometrics, paleopathology, zooarchaeology and ethnography, while working towards an understanding of the changing relationship between humans and horses across time.
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New York University's Department of Classics presents
How Ancient Empires Govern
Anne Kolb, University of Zurich
Michael Peachin, New York University
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Classics Department Conference Room, 5th floor
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair access)
For more information please contact hoyerdan@gmail.com.
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New York University's Institute of Fine Arts presents
Archaeologies of Performance: Ritual Movement through Greek Sacred Space
Joan Connelly, New York University
Friday, October 23, 2009, 4:00pm
Institute of Fine Arts
1 East 78th Street
New York, NY 10075
This event is free and open to the public.
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New York University's Department of Classics presents
Fragments of an Imaginary Past: Strategies of Mythical Narration in Callimachus' Aitia
Evina Sistakou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Thursday, October 22, 2009, 6:00PM
Classics Department Conference Room, 5th floor
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair access)
For more information please contact hoyerdan@gmail.com.
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New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The ISAW Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Series
The Temple of Osiris in Abydos during the Late Period
David Klotz
Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall, Second Floor
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
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New York University's Department of Classics presents
When Tragedy is Funny
Fred Ahl, Cornell University
Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 12:30PM
Classics Department Conference Room, 5th floor
Silver Center for Arts and Science
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair access)
For more information please contact hoyerdan@gmail.com.
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New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The ISAW Visiting Research Scholar Lecture Series
A Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire? The View from New York
David Taylor, University of Oxford
Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 6:00PM
ISAW Lecture Hall, Second Floor
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
The overwhelming majority of the surviving epigraphic texts of the Late Antique Roman provinces of Syria and Mesopotamia are written in Greek, and in a number of recent books and articles it has been argued that Greek was in fact the ordinary daily language of the local populations. By examining examples of the full available range of ancient linguistic evidence, and drawing on sociolinguistic theory about multilingualism and diglossia, this thesis will be challenged, and a more complex pattern of language usage will be sketched out. The consequences of this for issues of local identity and culture will then be explored.
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New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
The Sarcophagus East and West
Wu Hung, University of Chicago
Jas Elsner, Oxford University
Friday, October 2- Saturday, October 3, 2009
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
This conference focuses mainly on decorated stone sarcophagi from around the second century BCE to the third century CE, when this type of burial equipment not only continued to develop in the parts of Europe dominated by the Roman Empire, but also enjoyed considerable popularity in East Asia. Whereas the chronological and formal developments of each regional tradition remain an important research goal, this conference encourages comparative observations and interpretations of ancient sarcophagi in broader geo-cultural spheres and more specific ritual/religious contexts. It is hoped that by addressing these two research objectives simultaneously, this conference will help open new ways to think about the development of art and visual culture in a broadly defined ancient world, where the art historical materials available are subject to comparable methodological constraints both from archaeological excavation and from known literary and historical contexts.
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The NYU Center for Ancient Studies presents the
Rose-Marie Lewent Conference on Ancient Studies
Xenophon in a New Voice
Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 5:30 P.M.
Hemmerdinger Hall
Silver Center for Arts and Science, Room 102
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)
Welcome
Matthew S. Santirocco
Seryl Kushner Dean, College of Arts and Science, and Angelo J. Ranieri Director of Ancient Studies, New York University
Discussants
Paul Cartledge
Hellenic Parliament Global Distinguished Professor in the History and Theory of Democracy, New York University; A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Cambridge University
David Thomas
Independent Scholar; Contributor, The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika
Robert B. Strassler
Independent Scholar; Editor, The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika
Phil Terry
Chief Executive Officer, Creative Good; Founder, Reading Odyssey
All events are free and open to the public. For more information about the colloquium, please contact the College Dean’s Office at 212.998.8100
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Fordham University presents
Invective and Its Audience From Demosthenes To Libanius
Raffaella Cribiore, New York University
Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 3:00 P.M.
Fordham University
Lincoln Center Campus
LL 518
For more information, please contact Robert J. Penella at 718-817-3137 or rpenella@fordham.edu
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The NYU Center for Ancient Studies presents the
Ranieri Colloquium on Ancient Studies
Legitimating Violence: Execution, Human Sacrifice, Assassination
A conference in honor of Larissa Bonfante
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Hemmerdinger Hall
Silver Center for Arts and Science, Room 102
32 Waverly Place or 31 Washington Place (wheelchair accessible)
5:00 P.M. Welcome
Matthew S. Santirocco, Seryl Kushner Dean, College of Arts and Science, and Angelo J. Ranieri Director of Ancient Studies, New York University
Larissa Bonfante and NYU
David Levene, New York University
Legitimating Violence and Caesar's Toga
Michèle Lowrie, University of Chicago
5:45 P.M. Violence and Cruelty in Ritual
Henk Versnel, University of Leiden
7:00 P.M. Reception
Friday, September 25, 2009
9:00 A.M. Cicero's 'Gentleman's Guide to Lynching'
Andrew Riggsby, University of Texas at Austin
10:00 A.M. How Republican was the Roman Republic?
Clifford Ando, University of Chicago
11:30 P.M. "These Are Men Whose Minds the Dead Have Ravished": Combat Trauma and the Tragic Stage
Peter Meineck, New York University
12:30 P.M. Lunch Break
1:30 P.M. Vows and Violence: The Dilemma of Judge Jephthah of Israel
Jack Sasson, Vanderbilt University
2:30 P.M. Blood is Seed: Martyrdom and the Fracture of Ancient Political Theology
Adam Becker, New York University
This colloquium is co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, the Institute of Fine Arts, and the Departments of Classics, Anthropology, and Hebrew and Judaic Studies, NYU.
All events are free and open to the public. For more information about the colloquium, please contact the College Dean’s Office at 212.998.8100 or e-mail ken.kidd@nyu.edu
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New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World presents
Digging Up the Remnants of Scientific Graeco-Syriaca - Chiefly from the Works of Barhebraeus
Hidemi Takahashi, University of Tokyo and Yale University MacMillan Center
Monday, September 21, 2009, 5:00 P.M.
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
2nd Floor Seminar Room
15 E. 84th Street
New York, NY 10028
Space is limited, please RSVP to alexander.jones@nyu.edu
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The NYU Humanities Initiative and the Department of Classics present
Anti-democratic voices in ancient Greece and Rome (and their legacies)
Janet Coleman, New York University and London School of Economics
Thursday, September 17, 2009, 6:00 P.M.
20 Cooper Square (at East 5th Street), Room 503
Professor Coleman will discuss anti-democratic arguments found in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, to illustrate the ever-present voices of potentially or actually dispossessed elites and their attitudes to 'ordinary minds'. Beginning with what we today take equality and democracy to mean, she seeks to demonstrate the uniqueness of what Athens had as democratic with its rather startling view of the political AS emotional. She will contrast this with Roman republican and imperial attitudes to the emotions, especially as influenced by Stoic philosophy, and with reference to their views of the emotionally undisciplined mob. Developing an argument that distinguishes between social free speech and political free speech, she wants to indicate that we owe more to the Romans than to the Greeks in that we have kept alive some of the most prominent anti-democratic voices of that ancient past, in our own.
Reception to follow.